George A. Romero Week: Knightriders

Hey kids welcome back to Day 3 of George A. Romero Week. Quick question, what do you get when you combine Arthurian legends, the SCA and bikers?? Well it does sound like Sidehackers: Medieval Times but in fact it is not. Written and directed by our zombie master himself, George A. Romero pens a tale of camaraderie, love and hurdles to overcome. This is Knightriders.

'Sup?

Billy: I had another dream.

Merilin: That right?

Black spoiler again. Same black bird.

Merlin: Way you get knocked around, you're bound to have some weird dreams, Billy.

Billy Davis (Ed Harris of The Abyss, State of Grace, Glengarry Glen Ross, The Firm, Milk Money, Just Cause, Apollo 13 and The Rock) leads a traveling troupe of renaissance faire folk into jousting on motorcycles. A mash-up of the rebels of the road meets chivalry. He bestows his people with the Arthurian ideals of Camelot in that on the road they are equal one and all, in spite of what society and the norms may say. Untold number of injuries, the pressure for repair and living money as well as this dream of a black bird haunt Billy as he tries to keep the spirits of the crew. A promoter Bomtempi (Martin Ferrero of Hill Street Blues, Miami Vice, Jurassic Park, Get Shorty and Heat) want to represent the troupe and get them the big time gigs, make a bit of money on his end and present them to the world over. Billy thinks it would be selling out and says no.

My petticoat is caught in the chain!!!

Later he is bashed up and down by a corrupt cop demanding a shakedown and gets tossed in the clink for the night. Making his way to the fairground where the gang are supposed to perform next and is appalled that some of the members want to join the promoter. Adhering the wisdom of Merlin (Brother Blue of Knightriders) Billy starts wondering if he can pull the troupe back together or should he step aside and let them go their own way.

Another cycle troupe lead by Morgan (Tom Savini of Dawn of the Dead, Maniac, Creepshow, Creepshow 2, Innocent Blood and From Dusk Til Dawn) tells the gang this is easy money, your name will be recognized and you can show everyone what you are made of and so on. The crew is divided on the potential for fame and fortune and the love and loyalty to Billy.

A few words now about the movie.

Stephen King and his wife play spectators at the fair because he was working on the script for Creepshow with Romero. Filmed in 90 days and rounding out to 146 minutes, there was mild and brief nudity but deemed enough vulgar language to knock down the film's TV edited version to 115 minutes. Gotta keep the whipper snappers from learning those gosh darn dirty words and fleshy bits.

This armor chaffes!!

George A. Romero Week: Martin

Greetings Romero fans and welcome back to Day 2 of George A. Romero Week. Well I thought initially like so many that Romero was unable to get away from his zombie comfort zone and could not provide us any terror aside from the shambling dead that rot. I was, in fact wrong and discovered a disturbed character haunted by visions of vampiric seduction, impeding torch and pitchfork wielding mobs and the inability to tell if they are real or simply imagined. This is Martin.

Hmm?  Yes, Satan?

Martin Madahas: Things only seem to be spoilers. There is no real magic. There's no real magic ever.

Our movie opens on an overnight train with a young man (John Amplas of Dawn of the Dead, Bloodeaters, Knightriders, Creepshow, Midnight, Day of the Dead and No Pets) Martin after he is sedated a young women with a syringe filled with God knows what, slices open her arm with a razor blade and proceeds to drink her blood. A tad kooky, perhaps but maybe he is just misunderstood. That next morning he gets on another train to Braddock Pennsylvania with a man garbed in white (Lincoln Maazel of NET Playhouse and Martin). The man is actually Martin's great uncle Cuda, a strict Lithuanian Catholic that has no time for fantasies and absurd behavior and is highly suspicious that Martin's immediate family had died in Indianapolis while he was untouched.

Santa after Jenny Craig.

He takes Martin in his home but informs him there are rules and obligations to be met and will be met for anyone under his roof. His cousin Cristina (Christine Forrest of Three Stops to Murder, Martin, Dawn of the Dead, Knightriders, Creepshow, Monkey Shines and The Dark Half) is forbidden to interact with Martin at all which.. would make dinner time tough. Treating his grandnephew like an outcast the boy is frustrated and asks why, Cuda responds if anyone in Braddock is murdered he will drive a stake right through Martin's heart.

Working in Cuda's butcher shop Martin makes deliveries to several of the local women in town and zeroes in on Mrs. Santini (Elyane Nadeau of Martin) whose husband is out of town so often she tries to snare the lad for herself but it unnerves him the first few times as she is clearly grand uncle's best customers and must curb the beast. He catches a ride to Pittsburgh and targets a woman that looks lonely but he is unsure now of his predatory instincts. Will Martin be found and staked? Will grand uncle lighten up and put on a kicky beret?

Now a few words about our film.

To escape the dreaded "X" rating of the razor blade opening up someone's arm, Romero trimmed the shot down by several seconds because the MPAA found it to be vulgar, violent and unnecessary... yet every vampire movie has protruding fangs driven in a neck or around a collar bone.

Tom Savini did all the stunts, played Arthur, Christina's boyfriend as well as FX makeup for the movie as this was the first time collaborating with Romero but certainly not the last. The Latin exorcism passages read by the priest during Martin's flashback sequences are authentic so get those recorders, tablets and laptops at the ready to translate it just in case you have a distant relative that seems a bit hinky.

Narrowed down to 95 minutes Romero feels the additional 160 minutes that was removed really allows the viewers inside Martin's mind and psychosis to with Cuda talks to the boys the vampire lore, how the art of seduction could seem enticing but how they must never stray from the path of the lord. Deep stuff in my opinion.

So wait... you're not Shaun Cassidy?  Get out of my car!

George A. Romero Week: Night of the Living Dead

Good day all and welcome to Day 1 of George A. Romero Week and what better way to start the week off right than with his original work? I have seen this film no less than 75 times because it has been made fun of, marveled after and even used as a project viewing for film students. From the grainy texture of the black & white 35mm Spherical, to the wooden acting of summer stock folk to the desolate farm house that has clearly been abandoned and second hand furniture has been brought in, this movie put the audience on edge about a group of strangers all hiding from the same threat and forced to work together to fend them off. This is Night of the Living Dead.

I'll set the table, you coat yourself in barbecue sauce for the zombies.

Field Reporter: Chief, do you think that we will be able to defeat these spoilers?

Sheriff McClelland: Well, we killed nineteen of them today right in this area. The last three, we caught them trying to claw their way into an abandoned shed. They must have thought someone was in there, but there wasn't though. We heard them making all kinds of noises so we came over, beat 'em off and blasted them down.

Johnny (Russell Streiner of Night of the Living Dead, There's Always Vanilla, The Majorettes and Night of the Living Dead 1990) and his sister Barbara (Judith O' Dea of Night of the Living Dead, The Pirate, Claustrophobia, October Moon and Women's Studies) have trekked out deep into rural Pennsylvania to a yearly visit to their father's grave. Barbara does not seem comfortable around gravestones as Johnny teases her prior to be attacked by a strange man with tattered clothes. No, it is not a zealous hobo but in fact a reanimated body that wrestles with Johnny before bashing his head into a gravestone. Barbara lunges for the car after performing the flattering ankle twist and hurling herself in the dirt which most feminists are probably irate at this point, dives in the car and manages to wreck a slow moving car be simply not steering worth a tinker's damn. Now in her defense she just saw her brother murdered and a shambling weirdo chase her.

Jimmy Carter: the hidden drunken years.

She flees across the countryside spotting a farmhouse and scurries into it. A quick discovery around the house she finds a mangled corpse of a woman and prepares to flee yet again when a truck arrives with a man dressed in a neat cardigan flogs a couple of zombies allowing him to get into the house and slam the door shut. Barbara mentally checks out for a good chunk of the film as Ben (Duane Jones of Night of the Living Dead, Ganja & Hess, Losing Ground, Beat Street, Vampires and To Die For) proceeds to drown Barbara in a vat of exposition to kill time while he does his Bob Villa impression and fortifies the house... with a few nails and boards. So instead of taking spare doors off of rooms and barricading the windows and believe you me there are a lot of windows in this place, we find there are more people hiding out in the fruit cellar. Can we all get along in this time of crisis or will we all be zombie chow in no time flat?

A few interesting facts of the film now. 200 extras were cast to be the townsfolk as well as zombies back to back and given how dimly lit our movie is and the makeup work did obscure more than a handful of our extras.

The ground breaking aspects to this film are one of the first movies to graphically depict violent murders on screen, first film shot in Pittsburgh and the first truly successful independent films ever made. Casting a black man (Duane Jones) as lead role having to slap sense into a woman, being violent and judgmental to the rest of his cast in the late sixties is considered an edgy choice by many but Romero didn't look at this with racist glasses as viewed it as shooting a flick with a friend.

Due to the lack of knowledge of distribution, Romero did not see a fraction of the money the distributors might as well just sauntered by him with the gross takings.

George A. Romero co-wrote this with John A. Russo who later went on to pen for The Return of the Living Dead film in 1985 with writer/director Dan O' Bannon.

One step closer and your crotches are toast!

George A. Romero Week

Welcome one and all, girls and boys of all ages step right up! No, I am not a barker foisting cheaply made stuffed animals but I am inviting you all to enjoy a week of the macabre as we take a look at the works of one of the masters of horror George A. Romero. Yes the man that redefined the term zombie for us with shambling, lurching ankle draggers with a naughty pension for human flesh, Romero brought about two major effects with his first movie Night of the Living Dead. One in 1968, he put a black man as the lead role and two, zombies went from chemically induced servitors to primal lead flesh eaters.

Damn you Prada for going on sale!

Some find his films to be too graphic and gory. Others find him to be obtuse or silly. You will have to come to your own conclusions folks but in the spirit of the impeding Halloween I thought it proper to have a filmmaker of fear at the ready. So let's try to enjoy the collection of terror he has mustered and see if we don't jump out of our seats or scream like children seeing a big bug.

Drip dry zombie wear: for all your river crossing needs.

Michael Caine Week: Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

Welcome back for another helping of Michael Caine Week. Well with the fair amounts of laughter we got from Alfie, why keep the ball rolling at Caine's uncanny ability at comedy. Anyone can emote, shriek and scream at drama but conquering comedy is an entirely different matter. To quote Edmond Gwenn: Dying is easy. Comedy is difficult. Now as many of you, I enjoy a good con movie. The likes of The Lady Eve,The Sting, Ocean's Eleven, Diggstown and The Grifters. It is popular in books, TV and film for more decades that we are willing to admit. The end goal is never the most important issue but how you set the game. A tale of two con men working different angles with different styles and approaches are operating in the same town. Both consider the other a poacher and try to figure how to correct this. This is Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.

I shant fetch you a martini, as I am not Alfred!

Lawrence Jamieson: Do you ever have a single spoiler that originates from above the waist?

Freddy Benson: No!

Lawrence Jamieson (Michael Caine of Zulu, Get Carter, The Ipcress File, Alfie, The Wrong Box and Gambit) comes off as a suave, sophisticate who has set his den of thieves and liars in the French Riviera. With the aid of his manservant Arthur (Ian McDiarmid of The Awakening, Richard's Things, Sir Henry at Rawlinson End, Dragonslayer and Star Wars: Return of the Jedi) and his bought police official Inspector Andre (Anton Rodgers of The Old Curiousity Shop, Richard the Lionheart, Carry on Jack, Fresh Fields and May to Remember) the prey is watched and the fleecing can begin. The con of choice is seducing wealthy women and taking their money through misdirection and sleight of hand.

Hmm, Lord Poseidon look different than I imagined.

Jamieson has feathered his nest rather well but is concerned when he hears of a con artist only known as "The Jackal" who operates in the same fashion. Hustler Freddy Benson (Steve Martin of SNL, The Jerk, The Man with Two Brains, The Amigos, Parenthood and Bowfinger) meets Lawerence on the train and brags about his "conquests" to him when he catches Freddy lifting some fun money off an unsuspecting girl. Amused by Freddy but not overtly concerned he preps for his next pigeon only to find out she has already been taken by Freddy. With prison over his head, Freddy vows to take the next plane out of the Riveria when he encounters one of Lawerence's former marks. Figuring out the scam he visits Lawerence and informs him he wants in.

Lawerence in a desperate attempt to give Freddy a bit of class and style realizes this is not his cup of tea and has him portray Ruprecht, the awkward and mentally retarded little brother to terrify the marks away after the money has cleared. Not receiving any payment for his part, Freddy decides he is out on his own again, a lone wolf among the sheep. A showdown between both men is on the rise unless they can come to some sort of agreement or pact. Who will be the better man? Is the Jackal moving in on their turf?

A few words on the film now. This brilliant film was directed by none other than Frank Oz, puppeteer of Jim Henson's The Muppets, the voice of Yoda the Jedi Master and the utter disdained guard in The Blues Brothers. Now more than a few folks have made the comment that this is a remake of the famous film Bedtime Story starring David Niven and Marlon Brando and yes I guess I cannot argue with it given it is shot in the same town of Beaulieu-sur-Mer and all the characters have precisely the same names and cons and while I would like to think of this film as more of a homage to the original, it would be hypocritical of me. 

 Nevertheless, this is a charming film, amazing musical score and the actors are on top of their game. Incidentally, Bedtime Story is an exquisite con movie as well. Watch both and make your own conclusions I say.   

Well, the Riveria's homage to Ann Margret is captivating.

Michael Caine Week: Alfie

Hello and welcome back one and all for the third day of Michael Caine Week. Well we have had some thrills, spills and more than enough violence to rival The Wild Bunch, so what say we move more into a comedy? Howsabout a film that allowed Michael Caine a range of seduction, charm and good humors? In 1966, a play by Bill Naughton had done so well on stage that it wad decreed by Paramount that it be made into a film. With a budget of 500,000,  director Lewis Gilbert set out to find out lead role but actors of the range of Richard Harris, Laurence Harvey, James Booth and Anthony Newley turned down the title role due to the taboo subject of abortion. When the original play actor Terrence Stamp declined the reprise the role he suggested his friend and roommate Michael Caine. This is Alfie.

I'm afraid I am a bit of a dog in this one, folks.

Alfie: Make a married woman spoil and you're halfway there.

Our story centers around a veteran womanizer Alfie (Michael Caine of Shiner, Last Orders, Quicksand, Secondhand Lions and The Statement), who is living up life in the fullest of enjoyment as he realizes how badly he treats women. In spite of being charming to them he reflects that maybe he isn't the best example on how to behave.

The movie begins with him ending a relationship with a married woman Siddie (Millicent Martin of Stop the World: I Want to Get Off, From a Bird's Eye View, Moon and Son, Fraiser and Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont) after a brief liaison in a parked car with her and getting out from under his other lady Gilda (Julia Foster of The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, Half a Sixpence, The Great McGonagail and News at Twelve) who is carrying his child. Trying to remain unfeeling and aloof of these women, he is curious about his child turning out to be a son. Try as he might, he simply cannot make things work with the child's mother and she in turn marries a bus driver.

Care for a titillating photo of your wife?

Getting a physical, Alfie finds he has tubercular shadows in his lungs, compounded with the total banning of seeing his son, he has a nervous breakdown forcing him to stay at a convalescent house (recuperation ward) and is visited by Harry (Alfie Bass of The Lavender Hill Mob, The Army Game, Bootsie and Snudge and The Fearless Vampire Killers) who tells Alfie his detachment to women has been more harm than good. After being informed he is such a louse, our fellow picks up where he left off in pursuit of love. Will he find it or is he simply spinning his wheels?

Some trivia about the movie now. Sporadically, Alfie gets to break the fourth wall and talk directly to the audience which is not a common occurence for film and TV but occasionally such is used for a character on reflection and pointification of the soul.

The entire movie was brought in at cost of $500,000 or as the director put it the sum total money executives spend on cigar bills. While the entire film had an instrumental soundtrack by Sonny Rollins, the Oscar nominated song same title, Alfie by Burt Bacharach and Hal David was added for the American release and then later added to British re-release. The British version of which I watched was sang by Cilla Black while the US version was sang by Cher as a last minute replacement for Dionne Warwick. Heck of a way to handle your end credits.

Upstairs neighbor is playing that banjo, again!

Michael Caine Week: Zulu

Welcome back girls and boys to the second day of Michael Caine Week. As was previously mentioned, Michael Caine's first feature occurred in 1964. In which he played an inexperienced soldier during one of the more bloodier conflicts the British Army had ever faced. In January 22^nd 1879 approximately 100 British soldiers must do battle with over 4000 Zulu warriors in a pitch battle during the Anglo-Zulu War. After the crushing defeat during the Battle of Isandlwana, most of the soliders were sent to field hospital still under construction and they were building a bridge. This is Zulu.

Sand chaffing your willy too?

Pte. Henry Hook: Rourke's Drift... It'd take an Irishman to give his name to a rotten spoiling middle o' nowhere hole like this.

Natal Native Contingent Commander Adenoff sends message that of a massing army of 4,000 Zulu warriors are approaching Rourke's Drift. Senior officer Lieutentant John Chard (Stanley Baker of Hell Drivers, The Guns of Navarone, Accident, Zorro and How Green Was My Valley) has to assume command of a battered detachment of soliders and his second-in-command Lieutenant Bromhead (Michael Caine of Without a Clue, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Mr. Destiny, Noises Off... ,On Deadly Ground and Bullet to Beijing), a commissioned officer with no combat experience at all is a bit put off being subordinate to a engineer with a earlier commission. The two set aside their differences when word is sent that the army is marching their way across the land.

Chard proceeds to get as many strong backed men to tip wagons, load up sacks and crates in a defensive perimeter and hope for the best. The traveling missionary Otto Witt (Jack Hawkins of The Bridge on the River Kwai, Ben-Hur, Lawrence of Arabia, Nicholas and Alexandra, The Last Lion and Theatre of Blood) proceeds to find more faith in whiskey than the almighty and starts to tear down morale with his antics to the point that some of the Natal Native Contigent (transcribed natives made soldiers of the Empire) flee the terror of the upcoming battle. Chard has Witt locked in a supply room so he cannot demoralize them anymore than they already are.

A united front.

The men hear a strange rhythmic sound, a steady beat that sounds like a train pulling in the distance claimed Bromhead, when actuality it is the slapping of the assegais against their shields in perfect uniform. Terrified of things to come the soldiers hold their ground, aim their rifles and make peace with their lord as the wave enters. Slaughtering sixty Zulus, Bromhead feels confident and cocky while Chard reasons they sent in a skirmish wave to test the defenses and that the next wave will be massive. Determined to protect the camp on all fronts the lads pull together to watch one another's backs.

And now a few bits of trivia and fact of the film. Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi, of the Zulu tribes was asked to play the part of his ancestor, King Cetywayo in the movie. He was asked to be his great-grand father and was both honored and proud to present the Zulu nation. Of the 700+ Zulu extras many of them were descendants of the actual warriors that took part in this epic battle.

Because the Zulus who were play extras in the film had never seen a movie, Stanley Baker held an outdoor screening of a Gene Autry film so they would have a rough idea about what movies are and what they mean to so many.

Michael Caine auditioned for the part of Lt. Bromhead and his audition was horrendous. Months later producer Joesph E. Levine found him at a cocktail party and asked Caine if he still wanted the part. Caine reminded him that the audition was "terrible" and Levine countered with the original actor is ill and the crew leaves for South Africa the next morning. Caine shook the producer's hand, left the part and went home to pack his bags.

Surf's up!!!